Echo, the latest hero to join the ranks of Blizzard’s Overwatch, is quite the interesting new addition. Not only is she a sentient robot who has the unique ability to mimic the skills of opposing heroes, but a little-known fact is that she hails from sunny Singapore.
While neither Echo’s reveal trailer or any official write-up of her nationality (after all, do robots even qualify for such a thing?), a recent gameplay video by Team Singapore community lead Caldoran revealed that she can speak Singlish – the informal cultural language of Singapore.
Caldoran discovered Echo’s voice line while playing her in the Overwatch PTR (public test realm) servers. And as he pointed out, shiok is Singlish for describing one’s pleasure or enjoyment. It can range from eating good food, getting a massage… or even dropping foes in Overwatch.
Curious, Caldoran went to ping the dev team and lead writer Michael Chu for any confirmation, to which he received a favourable response from the latter, who responded in Singlish:
And of course, Echo’s nationality is supported by that of her original creator in the game’s lore, the late Dr. Mina Liao, who was Singaporean. While many might overlook this small detail, it does add a lot more depth to the diverse nature of Overwatch‘s hero roster.
We, and many players who hail from the Little Red Dot, definitely can’t wait for Echo to finally release, and browse through all her voice lines to see what other Singlish phrases she might have in store.
Marion has a serious RPG addiction. Sometimes it bleeds into real life; he forgets to sleep because he thinks he has a Witcher’s body clock. Forgive him in advance if he suddenly blurts out terms such as “Mind Flayer” and “Magic Missile”, because never once does he stop thinking about his next Dungeons & Dragons game.
Kevin Low
Natalie
Si Jia
